CD/DVD Drive has become invisible - Win10 Home x64 and Pro x32

Both my main workstation (Win10 Home x64 v 1803) and Laptop (Win 10 Pro x32 1709) have developed an issue with the CD/DVD Drive which they never had a couple of weeks back prior to another round of unwanted updates.

One specific program - Makemkv - reports it cannot find any optical drives when launched, but if a disk is opened manually via File > Open it works ok. Of course this may be just a program specific problem and I've posted a question on the relevant forum, as all other programs work OK.

But things have become worse.

On the laptop, the CD/DVD drive is now totally invisible to any program and doesn't appear even in Windows Explorer - it does show in Device Manager. I've tried resetting Windows but the problem still exists.

I'm just about to do a clean install on the laptop to see if this fixes things but any other suggestions would be welcome. I don't really want to do a clean install on my Workstation but the laptop is only a 'play' machine so that's not a problem.

Thanks.
PS: Just tried a another play machine with Home x64 v1709 and Makemkv works ok on this one.

Access Denied said:

Right click your Start button, and choose Disk Management from the menu. Maximize the window when it opens and look at the bottom of the window. See if your CD/DVD has a drive letter assigned to it. If not, right click it and choose Change Driver Letter and Paths...

:)

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, the CD/DVD drive is shown in Disk Management and has a drive letter assigned.

The clean install of Win 10 on the laptop has not improved anything. According to Disk Management, there is no media in the drive when there clearly is. Perhaps it has died!

On the Laptop optical drive the optics come out on the Disc tray and they are prone to dust. So you can clean the mechanism around and then the optic itself. Very carefully, I use a torch at a low angle to highlight the dust with a magnifying glass to check. Clean the mount and the optics.
It may have died and it is possible to replace those.

With a Desktop drive the optics is difficult to get at, just buy a new drive, they are very cheap.

You can go to the Device Manager, uninstall the optical drive unplug it if you can, connect again then scan for hardware changes.

The laptop DVD drive is definitely dead - what a coincidence.

However, the problem with Makemkv not seeing the optical drives in other machines is due to the new Ransomware Protection feature. If Makemkv is added to the exception list then it works fine

Thanks for all your help.